Degradation
Kevin W. Saunders
Throughout history obscenity has not really been about sex but about degradation. Sexual depictions have been suppressed when they were seen as lowering the status of humans, furthering our distance from the gods or God and moving us toward the animals. In the current era, when we recognize ourselves and both humans and animals, sexual depiction has lost some of its sting. Its degrading role has been replaced by hate speech that distances groups, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, not only from God but from humanity to a subhuman level.
In this original study of the relationship between obscenity and hate speech, First Amendment specialist Kevin W. Saunders traces the legal trajectory of degradation as it moved from sexual depiction to hateful speech. Looking closely at hate speech in several arenas, including racist, homophobic, and sexist speech in the workplace, classroom, and other real-life scenarios, Saunders posits that if hate speech is today’s conceptual equivalent of obscenity, then the body of law that dictated obscenity might shed some much-needed light on what may or may not qualify as punishable hate speech.
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About Kevin W. Saunders
Reviews for Degradation
S. B. Lichtman
Choice
Degradation: What the History of Obscenity Tells Us About Hate Speech presents a compelling and timely argument.
Melanie Zoltan
suite101.com
Degradation is provocative and...well presented; it should make interesting reading for both legal professionals and others interested in First Amendment issues.
Michael J. Gentile
Law Library Journal
Professor Kevin Sounders' book addresses two topics in the First Amendment law not commonly associated with one another, obscenity law and hate speech . . . the book makes a substantial contribution to this decidedly thorny area of First Amendment law.
Kevin Saunders
Law and Politics Book Review
Kevin Saunders puts forward a striking thesis, namely that hate speech deserves regulation under the First Amendment because it degrades the human personality of those whom it targets. In likening hate speech to pornography and obscenity, Saunders provides a novel and arresting approach that avoids entanglement in the thought-ending clichés that have marked much previous scholarship on this subject.
Richard Delgado,co-author of Understanding Words That Wound Saunders’ scholarship is characterized by painstaking research, often delving deeply into the historic antecedents to the legal doctrines and policies he is addressing. His intellectual courage, particularly his willingness to espouse with passion and persuasive intensity positions that are often controversial, marks him as one of the most significant champions for re-thinking the direction of modern American constitutional law dealing with freedom of speech.
Rodney Smolla,author of Free Speech in an Open Society